With more than 5 million users, Aura has become one of the best meditation apps available. The award-winning Aura app features the largest subscription library of mindfulness meditations, sleep stories, life coaching, cognitive behavioral therapy, and hypnosis sessions. It also features relaxing music and sounds. Aura calls itself the all-in-one app for mental wellness.
Upon review, Aura stands as one of the best meditation apps available on Google Play and the Apple App Store. National media has noticed Aura too, with the popular app being featured on many best-of lists.
But is Aura worth the $59.99 subscription cost? And do meditation apps even work? Let’s dig in.
Are meditation apps worth it?
Major studies have documented the positive impact of meditation on overall well-being and even general health. In fact, the Association of Accredited Naturopathic Medical Colleges recently published an overview titled “Meditation and Mental Wellness.” The article makes clear that meditation assists its users in areas including
- Reduced anxiety
- Positive detachment
- Enhanced brain function
- Improved sleep
Meditation and mindfulness apps provide these self-care benefits but with the added convenience of an app. Furthermore, qualified meditation experts and life coaches provide assistance in learning to meditate from your mobile device. These apps guide you through daily meditations by using breathing, relaxation, visualization and other techniques. Hypnosis, sleep tracks, and relaxing sounds add further value to mindfulness apps such as Aura.
How effective is Aura for sleep and mental wellness?
Among those who use Aura, 97% report improvement in sleep behavior and overall well being. And this perceived health and mindfulness growth occurs in as few as three days.
What makes Aura so effective? For one thing, the meditation app is simple to use. Sleep stories and relaxing music provide better quality sleep with just a few taps of your device. From single meditations to complete mindfulness programs, Aura provides the benefits of meditation while making mindfulness routines easy to learn. Plus, Aura offers a wide variety of mindfulness content. You can always find the self-care practice that works best for you including breathing exercises, hypnosis, and tracks for ASMR, or autonomous sensory meridian response.
What makes Aura better than other meditation apps?
Aura offers simplicity and immediacy in its design and overall approach. The very first time you log in, you can search from a variety of topics including:
- Emotions
- Meditation
- Hypnosis
- Breathwork
- Sleep
- Coaching
- ASMR
- And more
The app also features some of the top names in mindfulness exercises including life coaches, therapists, and storytellers. Lauren Ziegler brings 10 years of experience as a meditation teacher. Dorothy Ratusny is a registered psychotherapist with success in cognitive therapies, and Pasha Lyndi brings expertise in nature-based mindfulness and sleep stories. In fact, Aura provides access to more than 50 experts in varying fields of psychology, life coaching, and meditation. You can follow your favorite mindful health coaches, too, which makes Aura highly customizable to your needs.
Aura also learns from your input what kind of meditation sessions work best for you. Over time, the featured content adjusts to your tastes and mental health and wellness needs. This function helps you build a daily habit of mindfulness without ever feeling overwhelmed.
How do I use Aura to improve my mindfulness?
Start your mindfulness routine with Aura.
Aura makes starting your mindfulness routine easy. Upon opening the app, it immediately begins work to tailor the experience for your personal well-being needs. It asks, “What brings you here today?” From that simple starting point, you choose four or more topics that will benefit your personal experience most.
The variety of personal mindfulness needs Aura addresses is stunning. These include:
- Sleep better
- Reduce stress
- Calm anxiety
- Relaxation
- Improve focus
- Soothing sounds
- Love and relationships
- Healing
- Morning meditation
- Parenting
- Kids
- Boost energy
- Deal with anger
- Gratitude
- Yoga and movement
- Beginner meditation
- Advanced meditation
- Work
- Resilience
- And many others.
But Aura doesn’t stop there in its quest to build the most personalized routine for well-being. It then determines what modes of wellness exercises you prefer to begin your happiness journey. These include:
- Meditation
- Cognitive behavioral therapy
- Hypnosis
- Life coaching
- Stores
- Nature sounds
- Music
- Breath work
- ASMR
Aura provides daily, personalized content on your schedule.
Setting up your Aura meditation app only takes about a minute. It provides you the choice of whether to allow push notifications, which can help you build a habit. It won’t overburden you with constant pushes. Instead, it provides just one mobile push per day, and you choose the time. This push sends an in-app link to a daily meditation based on your earlier input. This feature works great for beginners seeking to build a daily mindfulness routine.
And the personalization doesn’t end there. A “Me” tab on the home screen provides some of the best features found on the app. It includes your recent mindfulness sessions, favorite tracks, playsist, and even the tracks you have downloaded to practice mindfulness offline. You’ll find your favorite life coaches and meditation teachers there, too.
The Aura meditation and sleep app is designed with your busy, daily life in mind. Maybe you don’t always have time to spare for a longer, deeper meditation. Aura allows you to choose your tracks based on durations starting at just a few minutes and on up to 20 minutes or more. And you can choose programs, too. These may last just a few minutes per day but stretch across weeks. This function allows you to build on your daily practice of well-being in just minutes a day.
A particularly fun feature found in “Me” is your gratitude journal. Gratitude journals help increase resilience, positivity, and overall happiness. This feature makes the app more “hands on” and interactive. Simply tap the icon, and Aura asks “What are you grateful for today?” It fills in a “I am grateful for…” response and the rest is up to you. It’s an especially nice approach as you can treat it as a simple diary, but with the privacy and security of your mobile device.
Is Aura the best meditation app?
Aura stands well among the best meditation apps such as Breethe, Calm, and Headspace. Although Headspace and Breethe offer 14-day trial periods, Aura (like Calm) unfortunately only offers seven days of free trial. If you are new to meditation and mindfulness, it’s often not enough time to ensure you develop a regular mindfulness routine.
Bit Aura excels in many useful areas. Ease of use and a high degree of simplicity helps make starting your mindfulness routine easier than most apps. And its personalization and interactivity keep you on course for a better health and well-being routine. The quality and variety of meditation teachers and mindfulness coaches also help Aura stand from the crowd.
Perhaps most importantly, Aura offers a profound breadth of content. To say that it provides thousands of meditation and sleep tracks almost misses the point. After all, who necessarily needs literally thousands of guided meditations? But those tracks encompass a wide array of poignant wellness fields often neglected by other apps.
For instance, someone seeking ASMR therapies may not find them in other popular meditation apps. Hypnosis and breathwork tracks also provide an additional layer of utility for many users. Perhaps you’ve never even tried these methods. Aura provides one of the best alternatives to get started in these and other areas of self-care and wellness.
Where can I find the Aura meditation app?
Aura works great on your mobile device or even from a desktop or laptop. Find Aura at:
- The Apple App Store
- Google Play
- Headspace Website for Desktop
Photo by @kent/Twenty20
